ADHD Is a Whole-Body Problem: What to Look at Beyond the Brain

23:45And I'm like, wait a minute here.

23:47Dr. Mark Hyman:There's something connecting all this together. And so when we unwound his story, he ate only processed food. He never ate a vegetable in his life. he you know had all these symptoms that were kind of inflammatory issues so I basically looked at his gut microbiome I looked at food sensitivities I looked at his toxic load I looked at his nutrient status and what I saw was a kid who was massively nutritionally deficient I mean it was low zinc low magnesium low b6 and folate and all these all these things that were so important that he never I mean, folate, the word comes from foliage. So you have to eat greens.

24:25Dr. Mark Hyman:This kid was not eating greens. And so this kid had such a dysregulated microbiome, and he also had a leaky gut. He also had a lot of food sensitivities. He had elevated gluten antibodies. So basically, he was reacting to gluten. Plus, he was reactive to dairy. And so we got him off all that ultra-processed foods. We got him on whole foods. We got him off the gluten and dairy and sugar and processed foods. I restored his microbiome by resetting it because we found he had a lot of yeast overgrowth. So I gave him any fungal because we found fungal overgrowth in his testing. He had lead, and I get rid of his lead through chelation.

25:03Dr. Mark Hyman:I optimized his nutrient status with magnesium, zinc. I mean, he had lots of low, very low magnesium, zinc, B6, folate. I gave him probiotics. I gave him fish oil, omega-3s. He was super low in omega-3s. A lot of these kids are. And so basically, in two months, the mother brought him back after changing his diet, fixing his gut, optimizing his nutrient status, getting rid of the bad bugs in his gut. He was completely better. He had no symptoms from any of the things that we talked about. And more importantly, like his brain was working and he didn't have ADHD, he didn't have trouble focusing, he didn't have behavioral issues.

25:41Dr. Mark Hyman:and the handwriting you can see before and after was the thing that made me write the Ultramind Solution. When I saw these handwriting change from before I treated him to after I treated him within two months, it went from illegible at 12 years old to perfect penmanship at 12 years old. And I'm thinking, wow, how did this happen? Like how did this actually happen in the brain? His brain went from chaotic and disorganized and just synchronous to coherent and synchronized and orderly in how it was functioning. And it was reflected in his handwriting. And a lot of these kids have what we call dysgraphia, which is basically bad handwriting.

26:24Dr. Mark Hyman:It's a metagordic bad handwriting. But it taught me a lot about how diet and the gut health and nutrient status play a role in these kids with severe ADHD. Okay. So you mentioned some nutrient deficiencies. And I'd love to kind of go further into that. Can you double down on what specifically you often see, what nutrient deficiencies you see, when the impact that the adequate nutrition can be, and when supplementation might also be a beneficial thing to explore? Look, if kids are eating ultra-processed food, they're nutritionally deficient. At Function Health, we're seeing that over 70 % of the average person who's doing Function Health lab testing, which is generally a health forward population, 70 % have a deficiency, not an insufficiency, a true deficiency based on the reference range from Quest of one or more nutrients.

27:14Dr. Mark Hyman:That's shocking. It should be shocking to people. It's not to me because I've been doing this for a long time. But to see actually the hard data at scale on hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people, I'm like, damn, we are all walking around with these undiagnosed nutritional deficiencies that are affecting the quality of our health. Sorry, you said they're also health-focused as well, too. So these people are mindful of the foundations. So do you think that speaks to the quality of our food as well, too? For sure. But people, yeah, it can be gut health, lots of things. But I had recently a couple of patients who were not health-focused.

27:50Dr. Mark Hyman:They never heard of Dr. Hyman. And they were obese. They were 300 pounds, 330 pounds of the guy. The one was 250, I think. and obviously they ate a lot of food, but they were very malnourished, very low omega-3s, very low vitamin D, like extremely low, very low folate, very low magnesium, very low zinc. And so we saw a very low iron when the woman had very low iron. A lot of these things are, people are walking around and they have no idea. So I think for me, I think it's important to test nutrient status, which is why I function health as I designed the panel, which I designed And it was to really look at a whole suite of different health issues, but really also do a deep dive on nutrients.

28:35Dr. Mark Hyman:So no else you're going to get vitamin D, omega-3s, your methyl monolic acid, homocysteine, which measure B6, folate, B12, looking at red cell magnesium, looking at zinc, obviously vitamin D. So a lot of things we can see what's going on at the common nutrient level. Iron, we're looking at everybody in iron. So we're seeing a lot of these nutritional deficiencies. And so, you know, they affect cognitive function. Magnesium is required for neurotransmitter regulation and particularly for relaxation, nervous system relaxation. And, you know, this kid I was mentioning to you with ADHD is irritable.

29:11Dr. Mark Hyman:He was hyper. He had insomnia. He had headaches. He had cramps. He had stomach issues, constipation. These are all magnesium deficiency symptoms. So it doesn't take a rocket scientist, if you know what the symptoms are, to diagnose magnesium deficiency, even, you know, without a lab test. The lab tests are a little squirrely, too. But I think we really have to not just focus on the brain when we think of people with these attention disorders. We have to focus on the body as well. And this is why when I wrote the book Ultra Mind Solution, the subtitle was Fix Your Broken Brain by Healing Your Body First.

29:47Dr. Mark Hyman:So, you know, people can do all the therapy they want. But like, for example, if you're trying to manage pain and you're standing on a giant nail, you know, you can take a lot of narcotics. The treatment is taking out the nail, right? And then if you have pain, you can deal with it. But like, I think a lot of what at times happens in medicine is we're using all these psychiatric tools to treat a problem that's not psychiatric. Now, sometimes it is. Sometimes it's a combination. But sometimes it's just biological changes. And there's a whole field of biological psychiatry. Now there's departments of nutritional metabolic psychiatry at Harvard, Stanford.

30:27Dr. Mark Hyman:They're treating very severe illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disease with dietary interventions that are very aggressive around ketogenic diets. But I've seen how these things work. And it's quite impressive when you actually are in the weeds with people and you work with people, you see the changes happen pretty quickly. I'm kind of taking a bit of left field here, but you saying that kind of made me think how much of the ADHD experience is biological and the rest kind of due to lifestyle and diet? Like, how much do you see that kind of overlap? Look, I think there's a spectrum of humans, right?

31:02Dr. Mark Hyman:And different traits and behaviors and proclivities and skills. And like, you don't have to pathologize all of it. But I think if people's life are really affected, if you rule out everything else, like there may sometimes still be some behavioral or attention issues that may be more kind of hardwired or more permanent. But I never start there. I always assume that there's stuff to fix. And the way functional medicine works is pretty simple. It's doing a very deep survey from history, lab testing on what's out of whack. And then it just corrects everything. So rather than like going, oh, well, it's just vitamin D, just give vitamin D, but don't change this diet.

31:53Dr. Mark Hyman:No, you have to change the diet. You have to get the vitamin D. You have to exercise. You have to treat the gut microbiome. If there's toxins, you have to deal with that. If there's infections, you have to deal with that. And so it's still the opposite of traditional medicine, which is just do one thing. Take this one drug with this one disease with this one outcome. It's not how the body works. If you're trying to grow a plant in your garden, you can't just provide water, but no soil or sunlight, or you can't just provide sunlight, but no soil or water, right? You need to provide all the foundational ingredients for health.

32:23Dr. Mark Hyman:And this is basically what we do in functional medicine. It's basically a detective job and each person is different. You know, sometimes it's quite simple. Sometimes it's much more complicated and can take a long, long time to unwind some of these things. Okay. So say I came to you today and I was like, Hey, Mark, I just got diagnosed with ADHD. What would you say to me? Where would you tell me to begin? What kind of plan would you lay out before me? As a, as a young woman or as a kid? Um, let's say as a young woman, because as we mentioned with Jenna, there's a lot of women around my age that are often getting diagnosed, right?

32:58Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah. I mean, it's, it's an adult thing too. I would, I would take a very detailed history. So when you come to see us at the Ultra Wellness Center, we have a 32-page questionnaire, which is annoying, but it tells me everything about you. I want to know every little symptom. I want to know if your eyes twitch. I want to know if you have dreams or don't have dreams. For example, if you don't have dreams, it could be a B6 deficiency. There's little clues in everything. If your butt's itchy, it could be yeast overgrowth. There's all these little things we know. I want to know mold exposures, whether you've had a tick bite, how much sushi you ate, whether you've got dental fillings, how you were born, what environment you grew up in, whether traumas were.

33:31Dr. Mark Hyman:I mean, I want to know everything. And so first I unpack all that. And then I go, okay, based on that, what do I want to look at? The clues. I mean, if you say, well, gee, I had a bunch of tick bites or gee, I live in a moldy house or yeah, I eat two and every day. I'm going to go down and find out what's going on. I'm going to do a heavy metal testing and check for mold and check for ticks. I'm also going to look at nutritional status. I'm going to look at your microbiome. I'm going to look at your immune health. I'm going to look at food sensitivities and allergens and look at your metabolic health and insulin resistance and all the things that that really matter to help give me a good comprehensive picture of what's happening with you in this moment.

34:07Dr. Mark Hyman:And based on those findings, you know, I will have a map. I will know, okay, for you, Emma, there's these, you know, five things that are the priorities. You know, you're, you're low in magnesium, you've got bacterial overgrowth in your gut, you've got a lot of mercury because you love toon every day. And, you know, you, you, you also have, have low vitamin D and low zinc. And so I'm going to go, okay, I'm going to fix all these things. And I'm going to do it systematically by first starting with diet and lifestyle and then adding in some nutrients, then correcting the gut issues and then getting rid of things that might be irritants like toxins or mold or allergens or infections.

34:47Dr. Mark Hyman:And it's just a systematic process. And sometimes it's unusual. Like I had a kid with a severe OCD, and it was developed after he got a strep infection. And there's actually something called PANDAS, which is pediatric autoimmune neuro something, something, something. I forgot the exact nomenclature. But essentially, it's a neuropsychiatric condition that's triggered by an immune response to the strep after you've had it and treated it. And there's antibodies you can measure. you can check for this, but it's just ongoing inflammatory things. So I actually treated this kid with ozone, which sounds really crazy, but you can't just throw more antibiotics at it.

35:26Dr. Mark Hyman:It doesn't really work that well. And it was incredible. The kid completely resolved. So I think we have to sometimes think out of the box when we're looking at things, but you really have to treat everybody individually. That doesn't mean like everybody with OCD has that problem. I mean, that was his particular thing. And this is the other problem with medicine is we label people based on symptoms, not on causes. So you can have 10 people with ADHD, they can have 10 different causes. 10 people with autism, 10 different causes. 10 people OCD, 10 different causes. So you have to be a detective and find out what is the cause for this particular person.

35:58And then your protocol for each of them would be completely unique. So your protocol for me would be different. Yes.

36:02Dr. Mark Hyman:And then it would be very personalized. So basically functional medicine is highly personalized medicine. And it's basically a simple algorithm, which is take out the bad stuff, put in the good stuff. There's too much of something that's causing your body to react badly. And there's maybe not enough of something your body needs to function properly, like light or water or sleep or the vitamin D or whatever it is. So basically my job is to be a detective and find out what you have too much of that I need to get rid of and what you don't have enough of that you need to get. And it's a very simple, like E equals MC squared framework.

36:37Dr. Mark Hyman:work, but behind it is like the whole human complex biology. It's quite astoundingly complex. So I just finished writing a book, which is going to come out next year, which is essentially about the whole map of the human body and how it actually works, which is a very different frame than Vesalius, who was the vivisection and basically discovered that there are all these organs and basically medicine got organized according to organs, not according to how the body functions. And so like we're talking about the microbiome, you've got the gut, but nobody's thinking that it's affecting the brain, but it's totally connected, right?

37:19Dr. Mark Hyman:So that's like, can't just look at the gut or you look at the brain. The brain is where your mental health is or your thoughts are, but it's not. It's systemic. So I think it's just really, it's a real paradigm shift. Before we close out here, I want to hit you with some rapid fire questions. So essentially just quick short answers, kind of first thing that comes to mind. How does that sound to you? Sure. The first one here is can caffeine help with ADHD or does it make it worse? It depends on the person. I mean, sometimes it helps focus, but it also can, if people are, they tend to be more irritated or stressed out, it can activate that.

37:54Dr. Mark Hyman:And it depends on your caffeine metabolism because basically some people have fast metabolism of caffeine. Other people have slow metabolism. And so it's really about finding out what really is going on with you. I don't have a hard rule about it. Why do people with ADHD seem to crave sugar and carbs? Well, when you crave sugar and carbs, it usually means there's something going on. It's either one of two things. One is you're primed for it through eating a lot of starch and sugar, which does also cause a lot of brain dysfunction. So you're kind of sugar, eating sugar makes you crave more sugar.

38:34Dr. Mark Hyman:And it does so through the way it affects your insulin production, which you make more insulin, then you become insulin resistant. Then you start changing your neurotransmitters and your immune cells, and you start to create this hyperphagia, which means you're just hungry all the time. And people know this. If you have like pancakes for breakfast, you're really starving by 11 o 'clock. but if you have like a protein shake or a bunch of eggs and bacon for breakfast, you're fine to lunch. It's because it causes huge swings in blood sugar. So when your sugar is crashing, you're going to crave more sugar.

39:04Dr. Mark Hyman:And that's the instability of blood sugar that causes that. The second thing is the gut. And the microbiome affects your appetite. I mean, we know GLP-1 drugs are affecting essentially peptides in the gut that regulate appetite and so forth. But it goes much further than that. And in fact, the microbiome, when you have overgrowth of bad bugs, they're hungry. So fungal overgrowth will tend to cause more sugar and carb cravings. And we see that a lot. So they might have fungal overgrowth and not be aware of it. And then when you treat it, then a fungal, it goes away. And I've seen people do that and also even lose a lot of weight.

39:46So then you talked about breakfast there. If I was to skip breakfast, will that make ADHD symptoms worse?

39:51Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, potentially. I think, you know, you really want to stabilize your blood sugar and your brain function. And when you eat protein, fat, and fiber in the morning, it basically stabilizes your blood sugars, stabilizes your immune system. And, you know, when kids are eating cereal and sugar for breakfast, which is basically what Americans really eat dessert for breakfast, sugar, sweetened cereals, pancakes, French toast, toasts, muffins, bagels, Pop-Tarts, I mean, you name it, everything, yogurt. I mean, there's more sugar per ounce of most sugar-sweetened yogurts, quote, fruit-flavored yogurts, than there isn't a can of Coke.

40:29Dr. Mark Hyman:So I think people need to understand that they can't eat sugar for breakfast. They can't eat dessert for breakfast. And if they eat protein and they eat fiber and they eat fat, it basically stabilizes the brain, the mood, cognitive function, and everything else. What about food dyes? Can they make ADHD symptoms worse? Food dyes, yes. There is some evidence that removing additives and colors will affect behavior. And there's some published data on this in the Lancet and others where they basically took kids and, you know, who had ADHD and they gave them either naturally like colored red liquid to drink or they gave them like artificial dyes.

41:02Dr. Mark Hyman:And the kids with artificial stuff just had way worse behavioral outcomes. So we know these things do affect these kids. Can menopause make ADHD symptoms worse? I mean, when we go through menopause, their hormones are changing, their metabolism is changing, their adrenal are affected, their thyroid's changing. And so, yes, brain function can change a lot. And women get brain fog, lack of focus, attention. But it may not be, quote, ADHD. It just may be perimenopause that's worsening any cognitive symptoms. So the goal is really, really to find out what's going on and optimize a woman's health through all basic foundational things which affect their quality of their hormonal function.

41:40Dr. Mark Hyman:and affect the way they go through perimenopause and menopause. So if you're eating healthy, if you're exercising, if you're getting up to sleep, if you're dealing with stress, if you're optimizing your nutrients, if you're optimizing your microbiome, often you can kind of sail through it. Hormones can be a useful adjunct, and I think hormones can be really helpful. But a lot of times the dysregulation of hormones that's causing cognitive function is related to the reason why they're having it. It's not just a worsening ADD. What do you think is worse for ADHD? a bad diet or bad sleep? Bad diet.

42:13Okay.

42:14Dr. Mark Hyman:I mean, listen, if you don't sleep, you can't focus, but that's not ADHD. That's just fatigue, right? But a bad diet will very much dysregulate your brain. And we see this over and over in clinical trials and observational data that the neuropsychiatric problems are very much related to the food reading. There was a study that I talked about in Food Fix where they took kids who were in a juvenile diagnosis center who eating all these bad processed foods, and they swapped out healthy foods. And in this juvenile detention center, the violent crime went down by 97%. Use of restraints went down by 75%.

42:51Dr. Mark Hyman:Suicide in these teenage boys went down by 100%, meaning there were no suicides, which is the third leading cause of death in that age group. And that's just from changing their diet. And they had them locked up so they could get what they ate. Amazing. Yeah, it was quite amazing to see. So I think diet plays a huge role. And we know a lot of this from prison studies too. When you give prisoners healthy food, they calm right down. If you reduce violent crime by 56%, they add a multivitamin. They reduce violent crime by 80 % in the prisons. It's pretty impressive. So I think bad diet, I would say, is the answer to that question.

43:26Those are all the rapid fires I have for you today and kind of all the main questions I had for you about ADHD. So I know we've covered a lot. We've talked about the microbiome. We've talked about inflammation. We just talked about sleep. We talked about lots about food, blood sugar. What's kind of like the one idea you want everyone to take away from our conversation today?

43:44Dr. Mark Hyman:It's quite simple. It's your body is connected to your brain. So everything that's happening south of the border of your neck is affecting what's going on in your head. And if you're suffering from whether it's a psychiatric problem or an attention problem or you're on the spectrum of autism, fixing the physiological problems that are often associated with these problems will often help dramatically, if not sometimes completely get rid of these problems. I've seen real miracles. Like, they're not miracles. They're just applying the science. But, you know, different people respond differently. I've had, you know, some kids with autism completely get better.

44:24Dr. Mark Hyman:I've had other people who improve. I've had others that had weird forms of autism where I couldn't find anything wrong. but they're still, my brains weren't working. So probably a genetic thing that was some kind of, you know, inherited issue. So I think it's important to really understand that there is a lot that you can do if you start finding out what's going on under the hood. And the best place to start is Function Health. It's just a dollar a day, it's$365. You get a really deep dive. You can see a lot of what's going on hormonally, metabolically, nutritionally, toxin levels, inflammation.

44:56Dr. Mark Hyman:I mean, a lot of things. So I think it's really a powerful first step, but then there's more, there's always more. So you can always work with a good functional medicine doctor, come to the ultra wellness center, but we, we really, we don't want people to suffer unnecessarily. And I think this is for me, the driving force of my career, my life, which is knowing what I know and do it and seeing what I've seen over 30 years, people getting better using the principles of functional medicine, that so many people are suffering needlessly and you know, I can't get rid of all suffering in the world, but like, if there's problems we have solutions to and we do, with functional medicine, then people should not have to suffer.

45:30Dr. Mark Hyman:And that's really, I think, what I want people to understand that if you're struggling, it's worth digging. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to The Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on The Dr.

46:00Hyman Show.

46:01Dr. Mark Hyman:This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner.

46:32Dr. Mark Hyman:And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultrawellnesscenter.com and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. so I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.